


The Haunting of Jung Wooyoung

by sansayingpurple



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Fluff and Angst, Ghost Choi San, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Supernatural Elements, also rating might go up we'll see, i have plotted very little of this so more tags might come up later, the yungi is kind of minor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:13:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21537259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sansayingpurple/pseuds/sansayingpurple
Summary: Noises in the kitchen, books flying from shelves, things going missing--something weird is happening in Wooyoung's apartment, and no matter what Yeosang says, it is not a ghost, because ghosts don't exist. Ghosts don't exist, and they definitely don't have a cute giggle, or dimples, or really nice arms, and they definitely don't flirt with him while sweeping all of the knick-knacks off of the coffee table.Yeosang says he's worried about Wooyoung getting ghost-murdered, but Wooyoung is worried about very, very different things.
Relationships: Choi San/Jung Wooyoung, Jeong Yunho/Song Mingi
Comments: 16
Kudos: 131





	1. Poltergeist

“It’s not a ghost,” Wooyoung sighed. It was punctuated by a small  _ click _ .

“I’m just saying.”  _ Click _ . “Everything you’ve described sounds exactly like, oh, I don’t know, a ghost.”

_ Click _ . “The part that doesn’t sound like a ghost is that they aren’t real,” Wooyoung said. His paddle connected with the air hockey puck and sent it straight past Yeosang’s guard and into his goal. 

Yeosang had his mouth open to say something, but with the clatter of the puck falling into some unreachable place in the air hockey table he froze, staring at some place just past Wooyoung’s right arm with a face sapped of amusement.

“That’s game,” Wooyoung said, as though Yeosang couldn’t tell by the flashing scoreboard and the fading hum of the air shutting off.

“Thirteen to fifteen,” Yeosang said, setting down his paddle. “Barely a gap.”

“You keep coming into my castle and trying to take my throne,” Wooyoung said, trying to balance the handle of the paddle on his finger, “but a king doesn’t bow so easily.”

“Coups are my specialty,” Yeosang drawled. “Anyway, your ghost might kill you before I even get the chance.”

“One, it’s not a ghost, because they don’t exist,” Wooyoung said, “and two, when was the last time you heard of a ghost killing someone? That’s not the M.O. Ghosts are in charge of spooking, not bodily harm.”

“Right, that’s why it’s breaking all your shit,” Yeosang countered. “Because it’s a nice, friendly ghost.”

Wooyoung reached down and shouldered his bag. “It hasn’t broken anything important. If anything it’s just annoyed.” he said. “Also it’s not real.”

“Well,” Yeosang said, pulling on his own backpack, “don’t come crying to me when it kills you.”

“If it does I’ll come haunt you.”

“As a ghost that doesn’t exist?”

Wooyoung rolled his eyes. “Exactly.”

They left the arcade with a promise to meet up sometime over the weekend to “settle” their Mario Kart score (unlike air hockey, Yeosang was winning--Wooyoung wasn’t mad about it, because he knew he was better at physical sports anyway). They would have to do it at Yeosang’s place, because one of Wooyoung’s controllers had recently stopped working. It had gone missing for a couple of days, and when Wooyoung found it one of the buttons was gone and the joystick rattled weirdly.

“Hope you don’t get ghost-murdered before then,” Yeosang said. “That’d be a major pain. So much paperwork.”

“Ha ha,” Wooyoung shot back. “Maybe I’ll bring it with me and leave it at your house.”

The train was going to be packed already so Wooyoung hauled ass to the station, just in case the evening rush decided to start ten minutes later than it usually did. He had no such luck, of course, and the least populated train car he could find, when he arrived breathlessly a few minutes later, was almost wall-to-wall with other bodies.

He managed to shoot an arm out and hold onto a bar a bit awkwardly, but there was still the uncomfortable press of people he didn’t know. He tried to make himself as big and steady as possible, so hopefully other people would shrink out of his way rather than the other way around, but he only found moderate success. Everyone else seemed to have the same idea and all he got was more unwelcome human contact.

Wooyoung was definitely a fan of  _ welcome  _ human contact, and he spent most of his time with his friends draped over someone’s arm or letting someone lean on him while they watched TV. But he’d known them for years, some of them since he was a little kid. There was something very different about random people touching him that left his skin itching and his muscles tense. 

It was a blessedly short ride, though, and soon he was out in the cool late summer air. There was a bit of a breeze, enough to blow his hair into his face and send prickles down his arms.

His roommate was probably at his mysterious significant other’s place, like he had been the majority of the past few weeks. He was still very cagey when Wooyoung asked anything about this unnamed person, to the point where Wooyoung didn’t even know if they were a guy or a girl. Mingi was acting like he was under some kind of non-disclosure contract.

Anyway, it meant that his apartment would be entirely Wooyoung’s for the foreseeable future, which was just fine by him. It wasn’t like he could just come out and  _ tell _ Mingi that he missed him and wanted to hang out with him more, because that would make him seem like a ‘needy little bitch,’ which was something Wooyoung told himself he definitely wasn’t.

He opened the door with a bit of effort. The hinges had gotten messed up somehow--Wooyoung assumed it was from Mingi kicking the door open with a little too much force, like he did when he was carrying groceries. It made the door hang weirdly in its frame, scraping against the side and sometimes sticking when Wooyoung tried to open it.

He flicked on the light and slipped his sneakers off in the doorway. “Hey babe, I’m home!” he called, just in case Mingi was around. There was no response, so either Mingi was asleep or out with his special friend.

He let his bag fall to the floor and slumped down on the couch in the living room, letting his head fall back. He wasn’t especially tired, but with the horde of assignments he had due in the next few days he was looking for any excuse to put them off. After a moment he shook his head and leaned forward to search for the TV remote.

There was a small sound from the kitchen, like a plate clinking against something, and he paused. His hand hovered over the remote. He listened to the silence for a moment before completing the action and flicking the TV on. 

There was another small sound, almost inaudible, also from the kitchen. Was Mingi actually home? He was very bad at being quiet, so it would have been strange for him to be making so little noise if he were. Wooyoung stood and listened again. It was hard to hear over the sound of the TV now.

“Yo,” Wooyoung called tentatively. “Are you in there?”

Nothing. Wooyoung let out a long breath and then laughed. “Jesus, I’m so jumpy today,” he muttered.

Suddenly, there was a large  _ clang _ and the sound of something shattering. Wooyoung jolted and grabbed at his chest, like he was an old lady or something. 

“What the hell?” he demanded as he walked into the kitchen. For a split second he almost expected to see Mingi and his whatever-friend going at it--what other reason would he have to try to keep so quiet? Instead he was met with an empty room and a bowl in several large pieces on the floor.

The cabinet door was open and some other plates seemed to be disturbed, but other than that there was nothing. Wooyoung took a moment to absorb the scene and then he sighed. “If you put shit away,” he scolded an invisible Mingi, “you don’t put it right on the edge of the shelf.”

But as he reached for the broom in the corner he noticed something. The shards of the bowl showed a blue rim. He blinked. He’d just washed that bowl, before he left to meet up with Yeosang, and he remembered drying it off and putting it away. He squinted at it for a long moment. He knew he hadn’t left it in a place it could fall easily. 

_ Stuff gets moved around when you aren’t there, stuff gets broken when you are,  _ Yeosang had said between practice shots on the basketball game in the arcade.  _ Either someone’s breaking in just to move around your shoes or you’re smack dab in the middle of a haunting, dude. _

But of course that was a joke. Wooyoung shook his head and started to sweep up the broken bits. If he started to spook himself he’d never stop thinking about it, and he had enough difficulty falling asleep at night already. 

“Why do you only break stuff?” Wooyoung demanded of the ghost that didn’t exist. “Why can’t you fix something every once in a while? You don’t even pay rent, asshole.”

Nothing, of course. 

Wooyoung resigned himself to the living room to do homework. Mingi got home late, with a faint mark hidden badly by his collar. Wooyoung threw him the requisite “Walk into a door?” just to get his flustered reaction and then went to bed. He lay staring at the ceiling for a good half an hour, trying to reason his way through the past few days.

Controller broken: it probably just fell or got crushed after he lost it. Door: Mingi, obviously. Missing dress shoe: he lost things all the time. Books on the floor when he came home the other day: ...the wind? Bowl...

Bowl...?

He groaned and rolled onto his side, stretching out on top of his blanket. There was an explanation for everything.

_ Yeah, _ Yeosang had replied when he’d told him the same thing,  _ and sometimes that explanation is a ghost. _

“Dude!” Wooyoung cried, storming out of his room in his pajama pants with a handful of shredded paper. “What the actual fuck?”

Mingi blinked at him over his cereal, spoon paused in midair. “What?” he asked uncertainly around a mouthful of some kind of puff.

Wooyoung slammed the shredded paper down on the kitchen table. Mingi jumped and slid his cereal bowl to safety. “What is this?”

Mingi stared at the little pile of paper like Wooyoung had just presented him with a question about quantum physics. “...I don’t know. What is it?”

“It’s the homework for a class I have in two fucking hours, and it’s ripped up, if you couldn’t fucking tell!” Wooyoung yelled. Mingi shrank impressively for how big he was. 

“What happened?” he asked, eyes wide. 

“You tell me!” Wooyoung demanded. His eyes darted from the paper to Mingi and back. 

There was a period of silence, Mingi watching him warily and Wooyoung’s chest heaving with breaths. Then, like a switch, Wooyoung’s senses returned to him.

Was there a universe in which Mingi would sneak into his room in the middle of the night just to rip his homework into little pieces, unprompted? Mingi was weird and sometimes inexplicable but he didn’t have a cruel bone in his body. Not even a slightly mean one. He’d cry if he thought he hurt someone’s feelings accidentally.

Wooyoung’s shoulders slumped and he let out a long breath. “What is happening?” he asked, mostly to himself. “Sorry. Ah, man. You didn’t rip this up.”

It wasn’t a question but he must have looked like he was expecting an answer because Mingi shook his head quickly. 

“Sorry,” Wooyoung repeated. “Sorry. It’s early. I’m stressed. I don’t need to take it out on you.”

Mingi hesitated, glancing at the paper, before slowly eating another spoonful of cereal. “Are you okay?”

Wooyoung snorted and sat down hard. “No? Look at this shit,” he said, waving his hand through the pile of paper scraps. Some of them fluttered to the ground. This hadn’t happened by itself, and Wooyoung fought the urge to dig back into Mingi. There was no way, no reason for him to have done it. Wooyoung’s mind was running through possibilities, and short of a burglar who really wanted him to fail macroeconomics, he wasn’t coming up with anything.

“Have you noticed anything else weird happening lately?” he asked. Mingi seemed to sense that it was now safe and he relaxed, taking another bite of cereal as though nothing had happened.

“You mean like the ghost?”

“There is no ghost!” Wooyoung said sharply. “That’s just a joke Yeosang is obsessed with right now. How did you even hear about that?”

Mingi blinked and then shrugged, maybe a bit too quickly. Wooyoung ran his fingers through his hair and let it fall back into his eyes. 

“You can tape it back together,” Mingi suggested. Wooyoung gave the paper pile a tired look.

“I’m sure she’d appreciate me handing in a serial killer note.”

“It won’t be that bad,” Mingi urged, leaning down to pick up the scraps that had fallen. “They’re not really crumpled up, just ripped. Nothing a little tape can’t solve.” At Wooyoung’s skeptical look he looked to the side sheepishly. “I’ve definitely turned in worse.”

“Comforting,” Wooyoung said, but he knew he didn’t have much choice.

Mingi was gracious enough to help him tape the paper back together, flipping each piece around and arranging it like a puzzle. When they were done it definitely looked like some kind of ransom letter, but the writing was all legible. Wooyoung was probably not going to fail.

“I apologize for accusing you of crimes,” Wooyoung said once the paper was safely tucked away in his backpack. “You’ve been acquitted.”

“I’m free,” Mingi replied.

Wooyoung opened his mouth to reply but something caught his attention, out of the corner of his eye. The kitchen had a large window over the sink, and he could have sworn he saw something move past it. It was probably a bird. 

Before he could look back to Mingi, though, he watched something pop up, almost completely obscured by their window plant, in the corner of the window. 

It looked suspiciously like a head of hair and pair of eyes. 

Wooyoung darted to his feet and rushed to the window, taking the plant away and searching the corner. Nothing but the glass of the window and the open air beyond it. From this angle there was a convenience store down below in the same spot the face had been. He swallowed and turned back around to Mingi, bracing himself on the edge of the counter and trying to look natural.

“Did you see something?” Mingi asked. Wooyoung raised his eyebrows and shrugged. 

“Probably a bird.”

“You got pretty excited about the bird,” Mingi said dubiously. Wooyoung glanced over his shoulder quickly.

“It looked kind of like a...well, you know, a  _ face _ , which is also impossible, but that’s maybe just what it looked like,” Wooyoung explained haltingly.

“A face,” Mingi echoed. He got up with his bowl and followed Wooyoung to the sink. Wooyoung scooted out of the way and Mingi examined the window as he filled the bowl with tap water. “I don’t see anything,” he said.

“Obviously not,” Wooyoung said. “I’m just going crazy. This is the eighth floor.”

“Or...” Mingi started.

“Not a ghost,” Wooyoung said firmly. “A trick of the light. I’m just on edge. I’m gonna go shower.”

He slipped past Mingi and made a beeline for the bathroom. When he was inside he closed the door and stared at himself in the mirror. 

“What the hell?” he asked his reflection. “Why are you so freaked by this? It was a bird.”

A stupid dumb bird, and Wooyoung didn’t even like birds. A bird with human eyes and a head of human hair outside his window eight floors up. Had someone slipped acid into his coffee when he wasn’t looking? 

But his paper, and the bowl…

“I’m taking away all of your rights,” Wooyoung hissed into his phone. Yeosang had the gall to laugh.

_ “Dude, I’m sorry. I was joking about the ghost. I didn’t realize you were five.” _

“Fuck you,” Wooyoung replied, prompting another round of badly filtered laughter.

_ “Look, you don’t need to worry about a ghost. Mingi is big and strong and will protect you.” _

“Good to know who my real friends are,” Wooyoung said. 

_ “Okay, I agree, you have some spooky stuff going on over there. I’d be freaked out, a hundred percent. But I can tell you with absolute certainty that there was no one outside your window,”  _ Yeosang said calmly. Wooyoung opened his mouth to reply.  _ “Who was alive.” _

“Goodbye,” Wooyoung said. “I regret to inform you that I will be resigning from my position as your best friend.”

_ “Drama queen,” _ Yeosang replied.  _ “I don’t want to be friends with a scared toddler anyway.” _

“Love you, asshole,” Wooyoung snapped.

_ “Love you too, asshole.” _

Wooyoung hung up and grimaced into his mirror.

“Hey,” Mingi called through the door. “Are you going to take a shower or are you just going to have conversations, because I need to piss.”

For a couple of days the weird occurrences seemed to disappear, as though Yeosang had spoken them out of existence. It was just long enough for Wooyoung to decide that he had gotten caught up in his own head, making up connections between events that weren’t there. He convinced himself that he had been overreacting, and he was embarrassed about it.

Then, of course, it all returned, stronger than ever.

Wooyoung was awoken in the middle of the night about a week after the face-in-the-window incident by a loud banging noise in the living room. He popped up out of bed blearily and peeked out his bedroom door. If it was an intruder, Wooyoung figured he could cut out the middleman and direct them to his valuables without wrecking too much of his apartment in the process.

The living room was dark and seemed to be empty, though with only the street light from far below it was hard to tell. Mingi slept like the dead, so his door stayed closed as Wooyoung crept into the living room warily. 

His toes hit something unexpectedly and he grunted. In the darkness below him he could make out the shape of their large armchair. It had been tipped over backwards. Wooyoung’s heart dropped.

“No shot,” he said to himself. “Absolutely none.” He felt around the chair and besides being overturned nothing seemed to be wrong with it. He lifted it back into place. It was heavy and he struggled in his half-sleep.

This definitely wasn’t the wind. The room felt uncharacteristically cold and Wooyoung’s eyes searched for an open window. No luck. He bit at his lip and examined the area around the chair. He was almost afraid to turn on the light.

“Well,” he said after a moment. “At least you didn’t break it this time.”

There was a rational explanation he’d figure out in the morning, but in the meantime Wooyoung was not above appealing to a ghost. “Can you do this during the day? I’m trying to sleep.”

Silence, of course. Wooyoung carded his fingers through his hair. He was going crazy, or maybe he wasn’t actually awake, or maybe Mingi had tripped over the chair on his way back from getting a drink. He was clumsy enough. Maybe.

Wooyoung hadn’t heard his door open or close.

By morning, he was on the cusp of coming up with a reasonable way the chair could have fallen. There could be something in the back of it that was broken, and it might have slipped the wrong way and stopped supporting the back of the chair, and then it could have fallen. It wasn’t a satisfying explanation, but it was an explanation at all.

Then, of course, all the papers had to get swept off of his desk while he wasn’t looking. He heard his pencil case clatter to the floor, followed by a book and a bunch of notebooks and papers, and by the time he turned around everything was scattered around the desk behind him. The wood top of the desk shone bare in the warm light of his lamp.

“Son of a…” Wooyoung murmured. The window wasn’t open and his door hadn’t swung at all. A chill in the air made the hairs on his arms stand up. “You gonna pick that up, now that you’ve made a mess?”

“What?” Mingi called from the living room. Wooyoung closed his eyes.

“Not you, never mind!”

He talked to Yeosang about it, even though Yeosang seemed unusually smug, because the last thing he wanted to do was look crazy in front of another of his friends. Yeosang didn’t count, because they both knew the other was crazy already. Wooyoung thought there was very little he could do to make Yeosang actually worry for him.

“This is all very interesting,” Yeosang said thoughtfully, stroking his chin for effect. “Sounds like you don’t have just any regular ghost.”

“There isn’t--” Wooyoung started, but he thought better of it. That morning he’d found his backpack overturned, its contents strewn across the living room floor. He sighed. “Is that so?”

“Sounds like what you have is a poltergeist,” Yeosang said. 

“That’s a movie,” Wooyoung said.

“It’s a ghost that makes noises and moves things around,” Yeosang continued. “Basically causing trouble. I feel like it’s not  _ that _ obscure knowledge.”

“Okay, great,” Wooyoung conceded. “How do I make it go away?”

Yeosang shrugged helpfully. “I’m not a poltergeist expert.”

Wooyoung did beat Yeosang at Mario Kart exactly once, and he considered that enough of an achievement to excuse himself and head home to make dinner. As he stepped through the door he squinted and looked around for anything that was placed incorrectly or broken. Everything seemed to be fine, so he relaxed his shoulders an inch and put his backpack down by the couch.

“Are you happy?” he asked tiredly. “Making me scared of my own house?”

No answer, not that he expected one. “For a ghost who’s supposed to make noise you sure are quiet,” Wooyoung grumbled. 

For the rest of the evening the poltergeist (Wooyoung was still resistant to calling it that, because that indicated that he believed both that it was a ghost and that ghosts had particular specialties, and he didn’t want to admit to either) stayed unusually quiet. Wooyoung was still wary, prepared to jump on every tiny noise the building made.

Then Mingi returned home with a neck full of bruises and Wooyoung was temporarily distracted.

“Are you dating a leech?” he asked with a delighted laugh. Mingi looked around and pulled up the neck of his shirt. 

“Is it that bad?” he asked. Wooyoung’s smile was threatening to break his face.

“I wouldn’t say it’s  _ bad, _ ” he said. “I’m just saying you’d be more subtle if you carried around a sign saying ‘I fuck.’”

Mingi’s face was starting to get red and he cleared his throat, letting his shirt collar fall back down. Wooyoung hopped up and came over to inspect.

“I told...we really didn’t...it looks worse than it was,” Mingi tried to explain. 

“Are those teeth marks?” Wooyoung asked. Mingi made a choking noise and shrank away, neck and ears furiously red even under the hickeys. 

“I’m gonna go make something,” he said, voice tight and hurried. He put his head down and made a beeline for the kitchen, Wooyoung giggling as he left.

“When are you going to tell me about your mystery friend?” Wooyoung called. Mingi didn’t respond, but Wooyoung could hear his knee running into something. Wooyoung sighed and followed him into the kitchen.

“It’s fine, it’s not a bad thing,” he said. “I’m glad you’re having a good time.”

Mingi looked like he was about to jump out the window. “I took the train home,” he said very quietly. “Looking like this.”

Wooyoung snorted, and then that turned into a full-on cackle. Mingi seemed ready to pass out. “It’s okay! It’s okay. Oh my god.” He tried to calm himself but broke into more giggles. “Come on, now you  _ have _ to tell me about them.”

“There’s not much to tell,” Mingi said, awkwardly fumbling with a pan. “I don’t think...he wouldn’t want me to…”

Wooyoung gasped and a smile so big it hurt plastered itself across his face. Mingi turned at the sound and gave Wooyoung a pained look. “What?”

Wooyoung wiggled his shoulders and cozied up close to Mingi. “Heeeeeeee,” he sang. “I knew it!”

“Oh,” Mingi said, concern loosening its grip on his expression. “Is that all you wanted to know?”

Wooyoung shrugged demurely.

“You already knew that I…” Mingi huffed out a tight laugh and rubbed gingerly at his neck. “You knew I like...boys. Already.”

“That’s not the point,” Wooyoung said. “The point is that now I know you have a  _ mystery man _ . Mr. Tall Dark and Handsome?” Mingi grimaced. “No? So he’s a twink.” Mingi’s grimace intensified and he looked back down at the pan he was holding. “Is he older? Younger? Does he go here? Does  _ he _ tell  _ his _ friends about you?”

Mingi looked like he wanted to sink into the floor so Wooyoung took his foot off the gas. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry, it’s your secret,” he said. “I don’t want to know to make fun of you, I just want to know because I’m happy for you.” He paused. “And if he hurts you I need to know his physical weaknesses.”

Mingi’s embarrassment seemed to be waning and he nodded. “I know. Not yet. I’m not...we aren’t...he’s not my…”

Wooyoung raised his eyebrows. “He’s not your what?”

“Boyfriend, or anything,” Mingi said. “We’re just friends.”

Wooyoung’s eyebrows shot higher and he looked dubiously at Mingi’s neck. “Very good friends.”

“Very good friends,” Mingi agreed, finally moving to the sink to fill the pan with water.

“If I’m actually bothering you with this just tell me,” Wooyoung said after a moment of quiet.

Mingi glanced over at him, caught off guard. “What? Why would you be bothering me?” He seemed genuinely confused.

“And that’s why I love you,” Wooyoung said with a sweet smile. “One of the millions of reasons, of course,” he said, batting his lashes. Mingi laughed. Wooyoung turned to head back into the living room. “If you’re making ramen could you make--”

He froze on the threshold between rooms.

The alarm clock that was hovering in midair next to the bookshelf froze too.

Wooyoung stared at the clock, his brain taking an achingly long time to respond. The clock moved around a tiny bit as it hovered, almost like it was being carried. 

Wooyoung swallowed and took a tentative step forward, keeping his eyes locked on the clock. Another step, closer, another, and then he was right in front of it. 

There was a long pause and then he held out his hands. Another long pause, and then the clock drifted slowly into his grasp. He took it, the air around it cooling his knuckles, and put it back on the shelf.

“Thanks?” he said softly. Excitement and vindication flooded through him all at once. He huffed out a laugh, the spell on him broken. “Oh my god. Got you. Got you, bitch, huh? Caught in the act! You’re losing your touch.” His eyes were fiery and he shot what was probably a very crazy-looking grin around the room.

Wooyoung jumped out of the way just in time for every book on the shelf to shoot off and land around him on the floor. 

“Point taken,” he said.

“What was that?” Mingi called. Wooyoung sighed.

“Nothing!” he called back. Then, to himself, or to the poltergeist, “This isn’t over.”

It was definitely not over.

Now that Wooyoung knew that the poltergeist could understand him (and didn’t appreciate being goaded), the rate of incidents increased dramatically. 

They were closer, too, more on the edge of discovery. Wooyoung would leave the room for half a second to grab something from his room and when he returned his glass would be tipped over and water would be everywhere. Laundry he was folding would become immediately unfolded the moment he looked away, and the toilet was somehow clogged every time he used it.

It was all annoying, sure, but with some pretty clear evidence that ghosts were, in fact, real, and that there was one in his house, Wooyoung felt much less helpless. The really annoying part was that the poltergeist seemed to be taking care to never do anything strange when Mingi was around.

It was pretty clear that it was trying to get Mingi to think Wooyoung was insane, which was never going to happen, but the annoyance was there all the same. Wooyoung felt kind of silly when Mingi walked into the room and he was mopping up shower water from the bathroom floor or trying to put all of the little plastic anime figurines back on the shelf. It must have looked like he was the clumsiest person in the universe.

At the same time it was sort of a game, although it was one in which Wooyoung had a disadvantage. He was always playing defense, trying to predict when the poltergeist would fuck something up and putting in failsafes to prevent it. 

It was fun, to a certain extent, but it was also exhausting, so when Mingi extended an invitation from one of his other friends, a tall basketball player named Yunho, to go to a party, Wooyoung jumped on the opportunity.

Wooyoung wouldn’t have considered himself a party animal, but he felt like he’d barely been out all semester, and he needed the chance to focus on something besides school or his pet ghost for a couple of hours. He needed some badly mixed drinks with shitty liquor and dance music and lots of people, to disappear into the crowd.

Yunho was a bit awkward but a complete sweetheart, and just the right combination of cute and athletic. He did seem, to Wooyoung’s dismay, to be both perfectly nice and perfectly straight, which was a crime given his eye smile and adorable giggle. He and Mingi spent most of the time playing beer pong and goofing off, leaving Wooyoung to slide into conversations with groups of sorority girls he’d never met and lament the lack of available boys with them.

It was a perfectly successful party, and Wooyoung got just the right amount of drunk, and he flirted half-seriously with what seemed to be the only other visibly queer boy at the party, and then he and Mingi went home. Mission accomplished, fun had, and no annoying poltergeist sweeping all the cups off of the table or knocking plants to the ground.

Wooyoung scratched at his stomach under his shirt and padded into the kitchen. His head hurt much more than it should, given how much he’d had to drink, and all he could think about was getting water. He flipped on the kitchen light, which was probably a mistake. The light was like a needle straight into his brain and he squinted so hard his eyes were almost closed.

He fumbled around for a glass and poured himself some water from the jug in the fridge. Then he leaned against the counter, trying to resist the urge to chug the entire glass at once and failing. 

It was mostly quiet, save for the slight ringing in his ears from the party music and the faint sounds of the night below the window. Then, from the living room, he heard a shuffle and a tiny thump. 

“Save it for the morning,” he whined, setting the glass down and making his way over. He leaned against the doorframe, still squinting. “I’m too tired to clean anything up.”

In the corner of the room, dimly lit by the kitchen light and the adjacent windows, was a person.

Wooyoung felt his entire body go cold, and in a split second he was wide awake. He froze solid and watched as the person picked something up off the shelf, examined it, and then dropped it to the ground. They took something else off the shelf and did the same, almost methodically. They were not as tall as Mingi, and much quieter. It wasn’t Mingi. Someone else was in his house.

Wooyoung could hear the blood ringing in his ears. All of this time with the poltergeist had gotten rid of his healthy fear of nighttime noises, and now someone had actually broken in and here he was, unable to react.

“Hey,” he said, his voice feeling like it was going to fail him any second. “What are you doing?”

The person paused and glanced over. Wooyoung’s mind ran through a million different situations. Was he going to have to fight them? Would they leave? Should he call the police? Should he wake Mingi up?

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said instead of doing any of that, because he was still trying to get his legs to move.

The person put the book they were holding back onto the shelf and took a few steps toward Wooyoung. Wooyoung flinched but made himself stay where he was, instead of shrinking back into the kitchen. 

“Wait a minute,” the person said. He sounded fairly young, maybe around Wooyoung’s age. It was a man, not much taller than himself. 

“Go now and I won’t call the police,” Wooyoung offered. 

“You can...oh man,” the man said. He huffed out a laugh and Wooyoung’s pulse jumped. “Did senpai finally notice me?”

Wooyoung opened his mouth to say something else but it got caught in his throat. Instead, all he could force out was, “What?”

“Well, this is new,” the man said. He moved over to the door and for a second Wooyoung thought he might leave, but instead he flipped on the light. 

He had dark hair, though not black, and he was wearing a light jacket over a t-shirt and jeans. Wooyoung’s eyes drifted down and saw that, inexplicably, he was only wearing socks. He was kind of cute, underneath Wooyoung’s anger and fear. He had sharp eyes and was giving Wooyoung a look he probably expected to be intimidating.

“Get out,” Wooyoung tried one more time.

“Dude, wish I could,” the man said. He examined Wooyoung for a moment and then his eyes went wide in some kind of understanding. “Oh shit, I’m so dumb. Of course you wouldn’t recognize me.”

Wooyoung felt himself start to unfreeze, and for all that having someone break into his house was unnerving this kid didn’t seem imminently dangerous. Why would Wooyoung recognize him? Wooyoung went through a rapid mental tally of his classmates, Yeosang’s friends, Yeosang’s friends’ friends, distant relatives, and came up short. 

The man laughed and pushed back his hair. He had dimples. “I guess it’s too late to play it cool, now that you can see me,” he said. Then he pushed off of the ground gently, rising a few inches into the air, and floated over to Wooyoung.

Wooyoung’s mouth fell open as the man stopped in front of him and held out a hand. 

“Oh,” Wooyoung said. The man shrugged.

“I’m San.  _ Was _ San? I guess I still am.” He shot a glance around the room. “I’d say I’m sorry for fucking up your house, but I’m not really.”

Wooyoung stared at the hand being offered to him and then reached up slowly to shake. His hand passed straight through San’s and San snorted.

“Oh my god, I’ve wanted to do that for forever,” he snickered. “Sorry, sorry, try again.”

This time, when Wooyoung’s hand touched his, they connected. San’s hand was ice cold. 

“You…” he started.

“Me…?” San prompted with a smug smile.

“You’re an asshole,” Wooyoung said finally. San watched him for a moment and then burst out into the highest pitch giggle Wooyoung had ever heard.

“Thanks,” he said. “I’m really doing my best.”

Wooyoung’s adrenaline was draining from him and taking with it the sudden anxious energy that had been keeping him alert. “Oh my god, I’m too tired for this.”

“Looks like you have some books to pick up, though,” San said with an innocent shrug. Wooyoung watched him, unamused. 

“Why don’t you go pick them up?” Wooyoung asked dryly. “Or I’ll go call an exorcist.”

San giggled again and then fixed Wooyoung with a bright smile. “Be my guest. Oh man, I haven’t talked to anyone in so long. This is so weird.”

Wooyoung coughed out a laugh and sagged against the doorframe. “I’m talking to a ghost and  _ he’s _ the one saying it’s weird.” It felt strange to say that out loud; the word ‘ghost’ felt awkward in Wooyoung’s mouth.

San started to respond. At the same moment the sound of a door handle turning broke Wooyoung’s concentration and a very sleepy Mingi poked his head out of his bedroom. The reverie of the moment was crushed immediately. Mingi’s whole face scrunched up against the light.

“What are you doing?” he asked, voice low and grumbly. “It’s like four in the morning.”

Wooyoung glanced quickly back over to San, but the ghost was gone. He wasn’t anywhere else in the room, not that Wooyoung could see. 

“I’m going crazy,” Wooyoung said after a moment. He nodded curtly. “Yup. Going completely crazy.”

“Okay,” Mingi said, rubbing at an eye. “Can you do that in the morning?”

Wooyoung could have sworn he heard another giggle, but it was only an echo in the back of his mind. 


	2. Tether

Wooyoung opened his eyes to the warm midday light filtering through his blinds, and to the realization that he had the weirdest dreams when he fell asleep drunk.

Of course his mind would conjure a pretty boy as the goddamn poltergeist--he hadn’t gotten laid in months. He groaned and swung his legs over the side of his bed. His mouth was gummy and terrible and his body felt like a dried up sponge. He stood and stretched his arms high into the air. 

“That’s a view,” said someone alarmingly close to his ear.

Wooyoung shrieked. He stumbled backwards and his arms shot down into a defensive stance. There, standing right in front of him, was the pretty boy poltergeist, looking equally shocked. 

They stared at each other for what must have only been a couple of seconds but felt more like an hour, and then Wooyoung finally gathered enough of his bearings to speak. “You,” he said. A beacon of intelligence.

The poltergeist--if the night before hadn’t been a crazy vodka dream, then his name was San--blinked. “You can still see me,” he said. 

“Obviously,” Wooyoung said.

“And hear me.”

Wooyoung glanced around. “Obviously.”

San seemed to work this over in his mind for a second before giving Wooyoung a small smile and wave. “Hey there.”

“Why did I have to get a dumb ghost?” Wooyoung lamented, letting his hands fall in defeat. “If I had to get a ghost.”

“Whoa,” San said, cocking his hip. “Who’s the dumb one here? I’ve been at this for ages and you only figured out I was real like a week ago.”

“Because until a week ago, I had a pretty good reason to believe that ghosts didn’t exist!” Wooyoung said. “For all I know I’m hallucinating right now.”

San looked unimpressed as he drifted over to the windowsill, paused a moment, and then batted Wooyoung’s spider plant to the floor, watching Wooyoung the entire time like he was a cat.

“What the fuck?” Wooyoung cried, jolting forward. Dirt scattered across the wood. “Don’t abuse my plants!”

“Could a hallucination do that?” San asked. Wooyoung gaped at him.

“Okay, I take back what I said earlier, why I did I have to get the most dickish ghost?” He knelt down and gathered what soil he could in his hands. 

San hummed and smiled. His dimples were cute--very cute--but Wooyoung was exasperated and not in the mood to forgive someone just because they were pretty. “You say that like I’m supposed to be insulted,” San said. “What if that’s my job?”

“What did I do?” Wooyoung asked with a sigh. He massaged his temple. “What kind of cosmic injustice is this?”

“Oh, don’t flatter yourself too much,” San said. “I’m not here because of you.”

“Why  _ are _ you here?” Wooyoung asked. San looked around and then shrugged.

“Who knows? It’s not like they gave me a brochure. I didn’t get to pick out my scenic haunting location,” San said. “Because lord knows I wouldn’t have picked this place.”

“So you just showed up and decided to start breaking all of my stuff?” Wooyoung demanded. “I feel like that part is probably optional.” He nestled the spider plant back into its pot and set it carefully on the windowsill again. He shot San a sharp glare.

San shrugged again, somehow looking more irritating while doing it. “Probably.”

Wooyoung closed his eyes and let out a long breath. “I liked it better when you were invisible.” He glanced at the clock on his bedside table and did some quick mental math. If he took a shower he’d probably have to skip getting coffee before his early afternoon class. There was still a bit of dirt on the floor but he’d have to deal with it later.

“Then I’ll just go invisible again, if you hate to see me so much,” San said, pouting. He crossed his arms and paused, watching Wooyoung. Wooyoung stared back at him, and it was still for a moment. 

Then San rolled his eyes and turned away, slouching a little more as he drifted around Wooyoung’s room. His body had a strange shimmer about it, like his edges and the air weren’t entirely separate, and Wooyoung could see the faint impression of things behind him, as though he were only a little bit transparent. Wooyoung watched him warily as he went over to the bedside table and made to pick up a pack of gum.

“Can you stop throwing my shit around?” Wooyoung asked. San startled and the pack of gum went flying. It hit the wall with a small  _ tap _ and dropped behind Wooyoung’s bed. San whipped around, eyes narrow. 

“You can see me again,” he said in an accusatory tone. 

“I could see you the whole time,” Wooyoung replied. San furrowed his brow and looked down at his hands. He opened and closed them a few times and then glanced back up.

“How about now?” he asked. Wooyoung shrugged.

“Yup.”

Another momentary pause, and then again: “How about now?”

“Literally nothing has changed.”

San scowled. “What did you do?” he demanded.

Wooyoung’s mouth flew open. “What did  _ I  _ do? What do you mean what did  _ I  _ do?”

“Obviously I can’t go invisible right now, which is  _ kind of _ a problem,” San said. He swept across the floor, and before Wooyoung could react his hand shot out like he was going to punch him. Wooyoung flinched and held his arms up, but instead of an impact San’s fist passed right through Wooyoung’s nose, leaving only the feeling that something had blown cold air into the room. “I can still do this, though!”

The spot where San’s arm was (or wasn’t?) was very cold and went right through Wooyoung’s head. He didn’t like the feeling or prospect of his brain freezing so he sprang back, waving at the air like he could dissipate the feeling.

“Okay?” he said, “Good for you, now don’t!”

There was a sudden knock on Wooyoung’s door and he flinched. San was busy staring at his hands again, balling them up into fists and releasing them again, as though it would help.

“Wooyoung?” Mingi called. Wooyoung closed his eyes and ran his fingers through his hair, only remembering that there was soil on his hands after he felt the grit. 

“Yeah?” he called back, trying to make his voice sound as normal as possible.

“Who are you talking to?”

Wooyoung pursed his lips and glared at San. “I’m on the phone, sorry!” he answered, hoping it sounded light and casual.

“Oh, okay,” Mingi said. “You want an omelette?”

Wooyoung’s eyes found the clock again and he wrinkled his nose. “Yes, please!”

“Coming right up!”

“Thank you, love you!” Wooyoung called. 

“Fuck you!” San yelled. Wooyoung gasped and started to say something, ready to apologize, but there was no response from Mingi. San glowered at him, arms crossed like a pouty toddler.

“You must have done something,” San said suspiciously. “He can’t hear me. But you can.”

“I really don’t have time to figure out your ghost problems,” Wooyoung sighed. “I have a headache and I have to go to class.”

He lingered for a moment, feeling inexplicably the urge to treat San like a guest rather than an intruder. Then he shook his head, dispelling the feeling. He went with renewed purpose to a clothes basket on the floor and rifled through it until he’d gathered a slightly wrinkled t-shirt and underwear. He knew he shouldn’t have put his laundry in the dryer before going to the party, because now it was all balled up in the laundry basket. He could feel San’s eyes on him.

“I need to change so get out,” he said. “Go hide in the closet or something.”

“Honestly,” San said, “First of all, I don’t do closets, if you know what I mean, and secondly, I have been in this apartment for months. You don’t have anything I haven’t seen.”

Wooyoung recoiled, covering his already clothed chest with the new shirt he was holding. “You’ve been fucking spying on me?”

“I’m dead and spiritually bound to this apartment, so I don’t think it really counts as spying,” San shot back. He drifted lazily toward the ceiling. “More like I just happen to go through a wall and oops, my innocence is sullied. And it’s not like I’m sitting here ogling when you have your dick out. I might be a pervert but I’m a classy one.”

Wooyoung gave San a pointed look and he held up his hands in surrender. “Fine, fine, I’m not looking,” he said, turning around to face the ceiling. It kind of looked like he was lying in an invisible hammock. His hair and jacket hung down behind him.

Wooyoung slipped out of the clothes he’d slept in and quickly changed. “What does it mean that you’re ‘spiritually bound’ here?” he asked as he stuck a leg into the jeans he’d worn the night before. 

“It  _ means _ ,” San started, doing a lazy log roll in the air to face downward at Wooyoung, “that I can’t leave. This apartment is it.”

“What happens if you try to leave?”

“I just can’t, okay? Some kind of cosmic force shit, I don’t know. What’s with the twenty questions?”

Wooyoung grimaced. “Oh, sorry, I’ll go ask the other ghost who lives here.”

“Technically I don’t  _ live _ here,” San said.

“And he’s a comedian,” Wooyoung drawled. “Perfect. Well, I hope it’s really boring in here.”

“It is,” San said with a bit of a pout. “You never do anything fun.”

“Sucks to suck,” Wooyoung said. San scowled. “I’m gonna go eat an omelette and go to class and you can figure out how to make yourself invisible again, I guess.”

“Oh, and I’m the asshole?” San countered, hanging upside down. A necklace fell into his face and he shook it away.

“I’m not breaking your stuff,” Wooyoung said.

“What else am I going to do?” San asked. Wooyoung shrugged.

“Not my problem.”

San didn’t follow him out into the kitchen. Wooyoung was surprised at himself. He wasn’t usually so vindictive; he didn’t even have that much of a hangover. In the grand scheme of things, going to a party when he had class the next day wasn’t the smartest decision he’d ever made, but it wasn’t enough to make him so grumpy.

There wasn’t even anything particular about San that made him upset. Maybe it was the situation as a whole, or some part of him that didn’t quite believe that he wasn’t dreaming. 

Mingi was standing at the stove, bopping a bit in place and humming something. Wooyoung let out a long sigh and plopped down at the kitchen table. Mingi glanced over and raised an eyebrow.

“You look terrible,” he said. Wooyoung rolled his eyes and tilted his head back.

“How are you so chipper?”

“I don’t get hangovers.” The pan on the stove sizzled.

Wooyoung pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes and stayed there for a moment. There was a little bit of shuffling, and the sizzling stopped, and then a plate tapped onto the table in front of him. 

He blinked and let the spots in his vision settle. Mingi set a second plate down across from him and then sat. He looked remarkably put together for how many beers Wooyoung had seen him pounding back the night before.

“You’re lovely,” Wooyoung said, sitting heavily and starting in on the omelette. Mingi wasn’t necessarily the world’s best cook, but Wooyoung would never turn down food, and his standards weren’t high enough for him to really notice.

“I know,” Mingi replied, mouth full.

San didn’t come out of Wooyoung’s room, and Wooyoung and Mingi ate in relative silence. It was shaping up to be a clear day, and if Wooyoung’s brain were on he’d have been thinking much more about poltergeists and the paranormal and how long ago it was that he’d been to church. As it stood, he was able to let his mind hum absently as he chewed.

When he was done he brought his plate to the sink and scooped up his backpack. He slipped his shoes on in the doorway, tapping his toes against the wood of the entryway to make sure they were situated correctly. Mingi came out into the living room and flopped down on the couch, reaching for and then waving with the remote.

“Have fun,” he said absently. “Learn things.”

“You going to invite over your secret man while I’m gone?” Wooyoung teased. 

Most of Mingi’s embarrassment about the topic had waned. He shrugged, eyes on the TV, smiling lightly. “I might.”

“I can hide in the bushes and find out who it is,” Wooyoung said. He checked his pocket for his keys and phone. “I’ll do a stakeout.”

Mingi snorted. “If you want to.”

“I’ll figure it out eventually,” Wooyoung said. Mingi nodded.

“I’m sure you will.”

Wooyoung wrinkled his nose in Mingi’s direction as he left. He ran through his schedule in his mind as he rode the elevator down to the lobby of his apartment building, tapping a rhythm onto his thigh with two fingers. He only had one class but it was a long one, a seminar, and he would need to get coffee at some point, or the shadow of a headache that was already pressing at his forehead would only get worse.

He was almost to the first floor when there was a large clang somewhere up the elevator shaft and, suddenly: “Jesus fuck, okay, I get it!”

Wooyoung jumped and almost lost his balance as the elevator slowed to a stop. He glanced around warily. There was a moment of silence, and then the doors slid open to reveal the hallway to the front door and, more urgently, a man who was glaring dully at Wooyoung.

It was San. His hair was a little messed up and he looked very unamused, floating heavily about an inch off the floor. Wooyoung blinked and gripped his backpack strap.

“Hi,” he said cautiously. 

“Yeah, hi, whatever,” San grumbled. “Now I  _ know _ you did something.”

“What are you talking about now?” Wooyoung asked, stepping past San out of the elevator. San swept through the air and stopped in front of him again, his glare darkening.

“Remember that little tidbit about how I’m spiritually bound to your apartment?”

Wooyoung nodded slowly. “Like I’m supposed to know what that means.”

San waved his hands in the air for emphasis as he spoke. “What it  _ means _ is that I’m not supposed to be able to leave.” 

Wooyoung’s eyes darted around, both an obvious  _ that’s not what it looks like to me  _ and to see how many people were around that he’d have to convince he wasn’t crazy. San nodded. “Exactly! I was minding my own business, not even  _ trying _ to push your bookcase over, because it’s obviously too heavy, and suddenly I get smacked in the face and launched down here!”

Wooyoung slipped his phone out of his pocket halfway to glance at the time. “That’s awesome. Can’t you just go back up?”

“I’d love to, if I could,” San snapped. “Unfortunately, I just got rocketed down eight floors and I don’t think it’s much of a possibility.”

“I have to go to class,” Wooyoung said. “I can’t be late again.

“That’s it, seriously?” San asked in wonder. “I have been watching you interact with other people for months and  _ I’m  _ the one who gets the cold shoulder, huh?”

“You’re not real,” Wooyoung said. San rolled his eyes. Wooyoung did an exaggerated version of the same and started toward the front door of the building, leaving San lingering in the air behind him. 

The part of Wooyoung’s brain that had been continuously refusing to actually comprehend the existence of the paranormal still held on, though its grip was slipping, and he found it remarkably easy to switch his brain out of I’m-talking-with-a-ghost mode and back into the normal world. With the closing of the door to the street, he took a breath of the outdoor air and tried to refocus on the actual task at hand--getting to class on time, preferably caffeinated.

He was only a few meters down the street before he heard a voice behind him, an increasingly familiar and similarly irritating voice.

“You always walk this slow?”

Wooyoung sighed shortly and continued as though he’d heard nothing. 

“Look, our luck’s up,” San said, a bit closer now. “Stop, jesus, give me like two seconds and I’ll stop making you late for class.”

Wooyoung stopped dead and whirled around, trying to look as unimpressed as possible. “Yeah? Is there a reason you’re following me?”

“Put on your headphones so you don’t look crazy,” San suggested. Wooyoung glared but snatched them out of his pocket and shoved them in his ears. 

“Okay?” Wooyoung prompted.

“I don’t know what happened, or what occult shit you’ve been getting up to,” San started, “but--and I’m gonna say that I didn’t even know this could  _ happen _ \--I think I got bound to you.”

Wooyoung blinked. “And?”

“And, when you got about fifteen feet away just now, I got pulled along behind you,” San said. “Not willingly, since apparently you hate me.”

“I don’t hate you,” Wooyoung said, though he wasn’t sure why. “I don’t hate anyone. You’re just annoying.” He paused. “What does that mean?”

“What, you hating me?” San asked. “Also you should keep walking, unless you actually want to be late.”

Wooyoung stuck out his tongue, which in retrospect definitely made him look crazy despite the headphones, and turned back in the direction he’d been walking. “What does it mean if you’re  _ bound _ to me, or whatever you said?”

“It means,” San said, floating casually next to him, “that I can’t leave. I have to go wherever you go.”

Wooyoung supposed that he must have still been working through whatever alcohol was still in his system, or he was still waking up, or his brain without coffee was unable to think clearly, because it took those words being said for him to actually register his current predicament. He did so in five parts:

  1. Ghosts were real
  2. There was a ghost in his apartment
  3. The ghost that was real and was in his apartment could talk to him
  4. The ghost that was real and was in his apartment and could talk to him was a cute boy
  5. The ghost that was real and was in his apartment and could talk to him and who was a cute boy was floating next to him on a street in Seoul, telling Wooyoung that he was going to follow him everywhere he went



Wooyoung stopped again, struck with a mixture of disbelief and confusion and understanding.

There was absolutely no way he could just go to class with a ghost following him like that was a perfectly normal thing, like it wasn’t an incredible confirmation of some kind of afterlife, or at least that he was very good at believing his own hallucinations. He couldn’t just sit and listen to statistical formulas, and he couldn’t work through any of this without caffeine.

“What?” San asked. Wooyoung realized that he’d been staring furiously into space.

“We need to figure this shit out,” Wooyoung said. “Follow me.”

“I literally can’t do anything else,” San said, taken aback by Wooyoung’s sudden change in demeanor.

“We’re getting coffee and you’re going to explain all of this to me,” Wooyoung said. 

“Yeah, sure,” San said. He seemed to be developing a little smile that Wooyoung decided to read as smug. “I’d love to. I love explaining. It’s my passion.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm alive!

**Author's Note:**

> I have plotted none of this, so where the story goes will be just as much of a surprise for me as it is for you. Anyway Woosan invented being in love bye!!


End file.
